to be trusted by the rulers with the custody of themselves.

These countries, therefore, instead of aiding France in the farther prosecution of her schemes for the attainment of universal dominion, will continually hang as a dead weight round her neck; and be always eager to seize the first opportunity of re-asserting their national independence, and of inflicting signal vengeance upon their oppressors. It is the natural tendency of every separate nation to press onward to the furtherance of its own power and aggrandizement; and in the present condition of Europe the now humbled nations will, whenever a favorable opportunity shall occur, necessarily bind themselves together in one common bond of suffering, rage, and hatred; and the moment that they can command any resources of power and of resistance, will direct them in opposition to France.

These attempts will be very much forwarded by the debilitating effects of her present unnatural state of society, which cannot possibly be permanent. The very attempt to prolong this state; the sacrifice of all peaceful prosperity and all individual comfort; the annihilation of agriculture and commerce; the substitution of an armed nation in the room of a regular army; would infallibly in a short time reduce France itself to ruin. It should also be remembered that if Buonaparte happen to be defeated in his plans of personal and family aggrandizement, he cannot look for aid to the loyalty and affection of the French people whom he has so cruelly oppressed; and who, in addition to his crimes, hate him for being a foreigner. They, wearied by their burdens, and exasperated at the ambition of their tyrant, may possibly prepare for him that fate which awaited the late Great Idiot of all the Russias; and which will perhaps ere long be prepared for his no less infatuated successor. France required nearly a century of re

pose to enable her to recover from the gaps and inroads made into her sources of permanent strength by the long-continued warfare, imposed upon her by the ambition of Louis the Fourteenth. With how much greater difficulty and with how much more tardy steps, will she find it possible to repair the far deeper and more deadly breaches made in the very foundations of her national power, by the more extensive and more fatal career which has been already run by her republican chiefs, and her imperial master?

But although a day of re-action upon France by the other nations of continental Europe is to be expected, yet no beneficial result can be hoped for from the joint co-operation of the few elder sovereigns who yet retain a precarious and uncertain seat, each upon the throne of his fathers. The monarchs of Russia, of Austria, and of Prussia, have been weighed in the balance and have been found wanting. They have invariably, by the bad administration of their respective governments, military and political, alienated the affections and restrained the ardor of their people; with whom they ought to have made common cause; and directed all the resources of their empires against the common enemy of human kind. From them therefore nothing good is to be expected; Prussia has sate down tamely and meanly under the loss of more than half his dominions; Austria has polluted the blood, and cast an indelible stain over the glories of the House of Lorraine, by bestowing the hand of his daughter upon a low-born assassin, a midnight murderer; and Russia has consigned his name and memorial to the execration of all future time, by basely bowing to the dominion of Napoleon, and by countenancing and abetting his usurpations on the remainder of continental Europe.

It is to be hoped therefore that the evil genius of Buonaparte will induce him to extend the tragedy of Bayonne into the families of Lorraine, of Bran

denburgh, and of Muscovy; that he will compel by his exactions, his conscriptions, his changes, his universal, all-pervading tyranny, the people of Russia, of Prussia, of Austria, each free and unincumbered of its feeble and corrupted court, to follow the footsteps of the Spaniards and Portugueze.

Lord Nelson in his correspondence, while commanding in the Mediterranean, speaks in the most unequivocal terms of the almost universal corruption of the nobility throughout continental Europe, and of his expectation that the people of the continent, whom he represents as every where abhorring the French, will one day rise in effectual resistance to Gallic oppression. See the correspondence of Lord Nelson passim, in the second volume of Clarke and M'Arthur's Life of the noble admiral.

To us in these United States, so very far removed as we are from the seat of intelligence, information respecting the actual condition of Europe comes in such scanty and uncertain streams through the tardy and occasional channels of the British and French presses, that from the total impossibility of acquiring those facts which guide the political researches of the diis melioribus nati of the other hemisphere, we are precluded from the power of arriving at those comprehensive results concerning the bearings and relations of the different contending powers, which are quite familiar to the well-instructed statesmen of Europe. Rumors strong and frequent are blown in upon us in this Ultima Thule by every breeze that wafts a vessel from Europe to these shores; that the Tyrolese, who so gallantly resisted all the efforts of the French during the Austrian campaign of 1809, have sent deputies to London to invoke the aid of the British government to enable them to break asunder the chains of their domestic tyranny; that the Swedes are showing manifest symptoms of discontent at the endeavor to force Marshal Bernadotte upon them as

their king; and that the emperor of Austria is in Paris, where it is most devoutly to be desired that he may be unkinged by Napoleon; and himself following the fate of Ferdinand the Seventh, that his people will prepare sepulchres in all abundance, over the whole of Germany, for the adherents of Buonaparte.

In considering the question of a popular revolution in continental Europe opposing successful resistance to the tyranny of France, perhaps we may take into our calculation of events likely to forward this desirable object, an edict of the king of Prussia, dated at Memel, in 1808; which ordains that after the day of St. Martin in the year 1810, servitude in all its kinds shall be abolished in the Prussian monarchy. The rank of citizen shall then be allowed to acquire the honors of nobility; and the nobles may follow any of the useful occupations of the citizens. No distinction is to be admitted between the noble and the citizen in the army. And the use of the cane, as an instrument of punishment, is expressly forbidden.

But leaving all conjectures as to the time when the people of the Tyrol, of Sweden, of Austria, or of the rest of continental Europe, may rise in re-action against France, and shatter down her empire; let us examine a conclusive fact as to this point; namely, as to the effects which the re-action of the people of a country produces, in tarnishing the military splendor, and in diminishing the power of the Gallic despot. I mean the struggle in which Spain and Portugal are at present engaged with France.

It cannot but be gratifying to find that the opinions advanced in the "Hints," &c. respecting the probability of Spain's ultimate success in her present contest with France, receive confirmation by the facts and observations contained in two very able statepapers, contained in pp. 1-16. vol. 1st, and pp. 190

-220. vol. 2d, of the Quarterly Review. The events of the year 1810 have only served to confirm the opinion which, from the very commencement of the resistance of the peninsula to the usurpation of Buonaparte, in May 1808, I hazarded; namely, that Spain would finally baffle all the attempts of the invader, and vindicate the integrity of her national domains in the face of the whole world. What we know of the present state (Dec. 1810) of Spain and Portugal has a direct tendency to ripen former sanguine hopes into the certainty of conviction.

Yet it is still the almost universal belief of the people of these United States that the Spaniards will be speedily bent beneath the yoke of France.

This subject is of sufficient importance to demand our serious attention. In the Edinburgh Review, Vol. 13. pp. 215-234, 459–462. Vol. 14. pp. 245 -264. Vol. 15. pp. 344-354. Vol. 16. pp. 26—7, the most decided and peremptory opinion is given, with the reasons for that opinion most largely and most ably set forth, that Spain will undoubtedly be subdued by Buonaparte. Mr. Walsh also, in one of the most interesting and splendid portions of his "Letter on the Genius and Disposition of the French Government," pp. 42-74, speaks with equal confidence as to the speedy and effectual subjugation of the peninsula by the arms of France.

It is with the most unfeigned diffidence, that, only furnished with the very scanty information respecting Europe which tardily and uncertainly finds its way to this remote country, I venture to dissent from the opinion of those statesmen, who, enjoying the greatest possible advantages of obtaining extensive and accurate information, do most manifestly prove by their writings that they generally arrive at a correct and comprehensive political result. Nevertheless, I shall beg the indulgence of the reader while I offer a few observations as to the probable issue of the